Your Workflow Processes

Even the most complex office processes can be captured and modelled. According to surveys, around 20% of business activities can be automated. New developments in business solutions enable dynamic process mapping, real-life simulation and automated deployment, otherwise known as workflow. All this leads to higher efficiency so greater productivity and increased profitability.

Think of all the small, everyday processes undertaken in your company's back office. Many of these tasks require collaboration with co-workers, specific task sequences, and have time-sensitive deadlines. Sometimes steps run sequentially (one after another), or simultaneously (in parallel). The flow may change, based on a particular occurrence. Your company might have scores, or even hundreds, of these processes going on at the same time.

A workflow defines what happens at each step of these administrative processes, who is responsible for each action, and how long that action can take. Think of a workflow application as a combination of to-do list and project management, on steroids!

Imagine a to-do list that can independently track the items for your entire company. Next, make the list smart enough to automatically generate appropriate to-do tasks as others are completed and schedule them as necessary for the next stage and manage the documents and data associated with each task throughout the process. Now, let the project management facilities track every individual occurrence of a process, each its own data, timeline, and history.

Finally, throw in some neat features like visual status tracking, due-date monitoring, business rules, and email and database capabilities and you'll start to see how Workflow Automation works.

To summarise, workflow applications automatically route work packages, each represented by a sequence of steps and associated documentation and other electronic resources, to the relevant participant and enable management to measure and monitor progress.

Mastering the management of workflow processes helps to maximize organizational performance and assure quality and conformance. Businesses become more "agile" - which means they are able to adapt quickly in response to the need to change. Identifying, prioritizing, and executing business improvement opportunities across the Value Stream (e.g. Supply Chain or Order/fulfillment process) can give high strategic and financial rewards.

A complete understanding of the issues and opportunities across an end-to-end process, often called a "Value Stream", requires an approach that enables you to step back, look at the big picture, then focus in to task-level opportunities.

Phase 1: Framing and Scoping
Define the vision, goals, and scope of the effort, and identify a deployment team and application software.

Phase 2: Analysis and Design
Develop a detailed understanding of the current value stream and the improvement opportunities that exist. Derive and develop a "to-be" operating model* and processes, supported by a business case, process simplification roadmap, successc criteria and implementation & deployment plans.

* Your target operating model is a concise, usually diagrammatic description the process framework that your company follows to get your products and services into the hands of your consumers. Models vary by industry, and even by market conditions, and every company's operating model is unique.

Phase 3: Implementation
Install and configure the application software with the required policy, process, people, and technology changes to implement all the workflows required to meet the required operating model and test them against the roadmap.

Phase 4: Deployment
Introduce the workflows to, and train the workforce. As each one comes on stream, measure the workflows for success, and put in place controls so that improvement benefits are sustainable and permanent.